Mandate Trade Union says Government jobs strategy urgently needed

Wednesday 22 September 2010

The Mandate Trade Union has today said that a Government jobs strategy is urgently needed to tackle the rising numbers of unemployed people. Figures released this morning by the Central Statistics Office show that the number of unemployed people has increased to almost 300,000 people with the number of long-term unemployed reaching 127,000 or almost 6% of the labour force.

According to John Douglas, Mandate’s General Secretary, today’s figures are a shocking indictment of the Government’s failure to develop a strategy to protect and grow the number of jobs in the economy.

“The country is fixated by the need to tackle the budget deficit and one of the biggest contributors to that is the falling income tax take due to the rising numbers of unemployed people. Indeed, the fact that more people are out of work makes the deficit worse again through the greater numbers of people forced to rely on social welfare payments.

“We need the Government to clearly set out a strategy which will show how they are going to protect the positions of people who are currently in jobs and to create jobs for those currently on the dole. Their failure to do so to date is the equivalent of fiddling while Rome is burning,” John Douglas concluded.